Customer Reviews

Developing WMI Solutions: A Guide to Windows Management Instrumentation

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On the back cover, one bolded line sums up this book nicely: "...[this title explains] how easy it is to write powerful management applications thru WMI on the .NET platform". If you are an experienced enterprise application developer working on the .NET platform and interested in what WMI can do to replace legacy solutions such as SNMP, this book is an excellent choice. Just enough attention is given to the history of WBEM, the overview of the WMI/CIM environment, the elements of the SDK, and the query methodologies of WMI, before spending the remainder of the book creating a solution to an example scenario, that anyone ready to "take the plunge" will not be disappointed.

Another quote on the back cover, as well as within the introduction section, states that "...[this book] is an essential companion for network administrators, software developers and team leaders looking to become proficient with WMI". Well, one third of that is true. I can't image what network administrator would find this title beneficial, as network administrators leverage WMI in automation and data gathering scripts or within applications such as SMS 2003. This title is not only not a traditional reference for the individual elements of WMI, nowhere in the title does it even cover the scriptable aspects of WMI. As for team leaders, if the team leader needs and introduction and administrative overview of what WMI is and what WMI's capabilities are, again, this is not the right title. For those two users I would recommend starting with Microsoft's free on-line WMI Scripting Primer (Microsoft Windows 2000 Scripting Guide) as it is straightforward, uncomplicated, and easy to understand.

A significant component of the Total Cost of Ownership of a network of personal computers is due to the myriad different pieces of hardware and software that these can contain; invariably from a slew of vendors. Integrating and managing the totality can be quite labour intensive for the systems administrator. Also too for the developer; whether she is writing the interface for a piece of software that others will use or if she is on the other side, and has to write code that runs that package and others.

Accordingly, Microsoft has pushed forward Windows Management Instrumentation. The book describes how to use WMI straightforwardly. You do need to know C++, COM and Active Template Library. No surprise there. Several sections also describe using the still new C# and .NET to write OO applications that easily connect to WMI. If you have not used C# and .NET, the book's coverage is concise enough to get you started. The authors treat a minimal subset that is enough for you to do useful work vis-a-vis WMI.

On the scripting aspect, the authors rightly give this careful coverage. Scripting files may not have the sexy appeal of a GUI-driven methodology. But in fact, for automated systems administration of many machines, they are usually far more important. Veterans of DOS and Unix batch file writing will see much of familiar approaches here.

Part of Microsoft's incentive for promoting WMI is to help it stay ahead of linux. The basic functionality of a browser and Microsoft Office are already in various linux applications. So at least in the network sphere, WMI helps Microsoft hold off linux. The authors do not discuss this, but if you read this book, you should keep it in mind; in the broader context of where the PC market is going.

I am now on chapter 5, but this book really takes the reader by the hand into the world of WMI.

Chapter 2 covers previous management technologies like SNMP and DMI.

Chapter 3 describes WMI, its motivation and details about its implementation that are absent from any Microsoft documentation yet. Note that MSDN lately revamped its documentation, so it is much better now.

Chapter 4 does a tour of the CIM model and the tools the Microsoft WMI SDK provides. This is a nice tutorial for developers.

Chapter 5 introduces the user to the creation of CIM class schemas. The CIM model presented is a bit outdated as the DMTF CIM model is constantly changing. The reader should be aware of this in order to prevent confusion.

Overall, the book is very educational and still of very good value.

When I finish the book I will update my review.

It still remains possible that this is the best book out there on WMI - the other reviews like it and the alternatives do not seem inspiring. Googling (( McBride death computer )) hints that one might not sell all that many copies of a book on WMI, compared to the Boom Days.

However I jumped right into the final chapter on ETW. Page 672 contains two assertions which I knew from previous hacking were flatly wrong. Googling (( WMI ERRATA )) is sufficient to return the book's home page, however the errata page contains no information, just an "under construction" as of 2007-march-13.

Plus which the general area of event tracing-logging is SIGNIFICANTLY updated in Windows Vista - there is no sign on this website of a revised edition, so actually the best book on WMI might be MSDN-online, which is of course free !

Perhaps the best WMI book currently available. Includes source code for all samples.

Book provides a great introduction into WMI and how to create WMI programs. Code sample are pertinent and easy to understand. Great as a learning tool and a reference manual.

The authors do a great job of compiling all of the relavent specifications and standards related to WMI(WBEM). They filled in the missing pieces for my research and also provided several well written code examples which further helped to explain WMI. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who will be working with WMI.

Bq